Reseller claims Mac Pro coming, Apple points to Cook’s comments

Apple maintains Tim Cook's previous comments on a Mac Pro refresh.

Apple has long been coy about its plans to replace its languishing Mac Pro workstation, which it plans to stop selling in the EU March 1 due to regulatory changes. However, the company has reportedly been a little more up-front with some of its European resellers. One such reseller, France Systèmes, now claims that Apple plans to have a Mac Pro replacement ready to ship within months.

According to an e-mail newsletter republished by Mac4Ever, Apple supposedly told France Systèmes that a "new range of Mac Pro will be released in Spring 2013." Spring is still rather vague; it generally begins around March 21 and ends June 21, though this year it runs from March 20 to June 20, according to the Farmer's Almanac. Still, that gives potential customers a better idea of a time frame for planning than "later this year."

Those worries came to the fore once again when Apple recently told its European reseller partners that it would stop shipments of the existing Mac Pro beginning March 1. This was because the existing tower design doesn't meet new EU safety regulations for computers and electronics, specifically related to its fan and electrical port.

We speculated last week that Apple may have had a more radical redesign for the Mac Pro planned that depended on newer, lower-power Xeon processors. However, Intel has delayed their release compared to its original roadmap, which could be a factor in the new Mac Pro's delay.

We believe Apple could announce a new Mac Pro (or some suitable replacement) during its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Last year the event was held from June 11–15, so Apple could sneak in an introduction at WWDC and still fall within "springtime." A June introduction also coincides roughly with the time Intel is expected to introduce new server-class processors that use its latest 22nm 3D transistor process.

When asked on Wednesday about its Mac Pro launch plans, Apple declined to comment on France Systèmes claims, instead pointing to Cook's previous comments that a new model would come "later" in the year.

Promoted Comments

The 2006 Mac Pro was a truly amazing machine, one of the finest personal computers ever made. They were so inexpensive for the hardware on offer; the $2500 model would be more like $4K from everyone else. They were wildly expandable, with eight RAM slots, and four PCIe slots with malleable lane configurations, so you could just plug in pretty much anything, and allocate the PCIe lanes pretty much how you wanted. And the machine was really, really quiet, although the aluminum case would transmit drive sound like crazy if you put anything loud in it.

Everything since has been disappointing, much more expensive, and badly crippled in terms of RAM totals. In 2006, they were the slam-dunk decision, way better than anyone else. But at every refresh since, they've fallen farther and farther behind the workstation-class machines from Dell and HP, selling at fairly comparable prices.

I've been thinking for a long time that Apple doesn't really want to sell Mac Pros, and they're gradually making them so unappealing that they can quietly discontinue them, blaming low demand. They've found new markets they'd rather use their tech talent on. From a money perspective, it's hard to blame them, but I also understand when the pro users feel shafted, between the gradual obsolescence of the platform and the steady degradation of the pro-level software Apple used to do.

As a designer, these last few years have been rife with heavy decisions and compromise when it comes to picking up Apple products. The Mini is economical, and the RAM capacity and processor can handle a workload well above expectation, but the GPU has been nothing short of a joke and no serious professional could survive long on it. Every refresh of the iMac brings better and better processors, leaping far away from the limitations of its mobile-type parts, but the walled garden and anorexia mentalities of Apple creeps in more and more often by soldering parts or making end-user serviceability a warranty-breaker in favor of slim form factor. And the Pro... What a heartbreaker. I would love to buy one, but for that inflated price, with those outdated parts, and that obvious lack of commitment from Apple? No way.

More than any other desktop model that they currently have, the Mac Pro has the potential to revolutionize and diversify Apple, or show that the only innovation is coming out of the hand held department.

Honestly, I think that apple doesn't necessarily need a new tower anywhere near as much as it needs a new monitor to go with good hardware. It needs a retina-class desktop display. The fact is that you cannot buy a desktop monitor from apple with equal or greater than vertical resolution than an ipad. That's kind of messed up.

The right move is a somewhat updated tower, paired with a 3820x2400 monitor. They could sell the monitor for $1500 alone, or perhaps $3000 for both. That would make for a compelling and frankly necessary offering.

The 2006 Mac Pro was a truly amazing machine, one of the finest personal computers ever made. They were so inexpensive for the hardware on offer; the $2500 model would be more like $4K from everyone else. They were wildly expandable, with eight RAM slots, and four PCIe slots with malleable lane configurations, so you could just plug in pretty much anything, and allocate the PCIe lanes pretty much how you wanted. And the machine was really, really quiet, although the aluminum case would transmit drive sound like crazy if you put anything loud in it.

Everything since has been disappointing, much more expensive, and badly crippled in terms of RAM totals. In 2006, they were the slam-dunk decision, way better than anyone else. But at every refresh since, they've fallen farther and farther behind the workstation-class machines from Dell and HP, selling at fairly comparable prices.

I've been thinking for a long time that Apple doesn't really want to sell Mac Pros, and they're gradually making them so unappealing that they can quietly discontinue them, blaming low demand. They've found new markets they'd rather use their tech talent on. From a money perspective, it's hard to blame them, but I also understand when the pro users feel shafted, between the gradual obsolescence of the platform and the steady degradation of the pro-level software Apple used to do.

Not surprised apple is waiting on new Intel silicon. It's actually a smart move. Existing Xeons are not a significant upgrade from what apple already sells, even if the chassis is an old design and lacks thunderbolt, so a minor update at this point is moot. I do wish they did one in early 2012, a minor bump, but I think they had issues with either a comperable board fitting in the chassis, or power supply requirements that would have required a redesign anyway of the chassis.

Agree with other posters, a 4K screen capable of editing QXHD content would be very welcome, if not just a "retina" class display in 27 or 30" priced under $1500. a Mac pro that can support SEVERAL retina panels will also be important. I also think part of this limitation is not just Intel itself, but nVidia or AMD not producing GPUs that can move the data onto the board to go out TB ports, or extending TB through their own GPU architecture. The onboard GPUs go this, but PCIe GPUs currently do not, and that's a big holdup if they're targeting that direction of enhanced screens.

The 2006 Mac Pro was a truly amazing machine, one of the finest personal computers ever made.

Still using mine as my desktop. Keeps cranking away reliably and near-silently, even with all four drive bays loaded. It's still able to run the latest versions of a lot of software like Photoshop. It was expensive, but in the 6.5 years I've owned it, a lot of PC users have gone through 2 or even 3 machines. That has made the Mac Pro a relatively cheap machine to own on a per-year basis.

I've no idea how true this story is, but there's a great opportunity to make something physically smaller than the Mac Pro, but still extendible perhaps with multiple Thunderbolt ports, that could occupy the cost, size and performance gap between the current Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, and go beyond the current Mac Pro in basic processing/RAM. It would be a shame if Apple were reluctant to do this for fear of cannibalising sales of the iMac, especially as they're having so much trouble making and supplying them.

As a designer, these last few years have been rife with heavy decisions and compromise when it comes to picking up Apple products. The Mini is economical, and the RAM capacity and processor can handle a workload well above expectation, but the GPU has been nothing short of a joke and no serious professional could survive long on it. Every refresh of the iMac brings better and better processors, leaping far away from the limitations of its mobile-type parts, but the walled garden and anorexia mentalities of Apple creeps in more and more often by soldering parts or making end-user serviceability a warranty-breaker in favor of slim form factor. And the Pro... What a heartbreaker. I would love to buy one, but for that inflated price, with those outdated parts, and that obvious lack of commitment from Apple? No way.

More than any other desktop model that they currently have, the Mac Pro has the potential to revolutionize and diversify Apple, or show that the only innovation is coming out of the hand held department.

I love Apple but have been really disappointed with them with the Mac Pro. I've moved on -- I use my old, aging Mac Pro (2009 era) as a server now and a zippy Mac Mini Server with its hard drives replaced with OWC SSDs. Super speed, no drama about being dumped by Apple's policies, costs $1000 instead of $3500, I can use whatever monitor I want. Graphics aren't even bad at all, and it's a work machine so I'm not gaming anyway.

Only problem with the above board is relatively few card slots, and no on-board thunderbolt. So Apple might go with a slightly different board with more slots & provide Thunderbolt via an Intel add-on card.

The 2006 Mac Pro was a truly amazing machine, one of the finest personal computers ever made. They were so inexpensive for the hardware on offer; the $2500 model would be more like $4K from everyone else. They were wildly expandable, with eight RAM slots, and four PCIe slots with malleable lane configurations, so you could just plug in pretty much anything, and allocate the PCIe lanes pretty much how you wanted. And the machine was really, really quiet, although the aluminum case would transmit drive sound like crazy if you put anything loud in it.

Everything since has been disappointing, much more expensive, and badly crippled in terms of RAM totals. In 2006, they were the slam-dunk decision, way better than anyone else. But at every refresh since, they've fallen farther and farther behind the workstation-class machines from Dell and HP, selling at fairly comparable prices.

I've been thinking for a long time that Apple doesn't really want to sell Mac Pros, and they're gradually making them so unappealing that they can quietly discontinue them, blaming low demand. They've found new markets they'd rather use their tech talent on. From a money perspective, it's hard to blame them, but I also understand when the pro users feel shafted, between the gradual obsolescence of the platform and the steady degradation of the pro-level software Apple used to do.

Still rocking mine...it's still a beastly machine. I picked up some quad-core processors off eBay to swap in, but I haven't felt it slow enough to even use them.

I've been thinking for a long time that Apple doesn't really want to sell Mac Pros, and they're gradually making them so unappealing that they can quietly discontinue them, blaming low demand. They've found new markets they'd rather use their tech talent on. From a money perspective, it's hard to blame them, but I also understand when the pro users feel shafted, between the gradual obsolescence of the platform and the steady degradation of the pro-level software Apple used to do.

I think this currently accepted "groupthink" about the Mac Pro is likely wildly wrong.

Apple has huge resources. It has over $100 billion sitting in the bank. It can easily expend the design resources to keep the Mac Pro up to date, and in fact could very well leapfrog well ahead of the competition. It certainly has the capacity to innovate on several completely different fronts.

The Mac Pro is a "halo product" that has beneficial effects for Apple well beyond its direct profits. Scientists, engineers, software developers and creative professionals who use them are exposed to the benefits of MacOS, and are likely to evangelize for Apple.

I think Apple should expand its tower based computer lineup from the rumored xMac all the way to "composable" Power Macs that could provide deskside supercomputing (not millions of cores, but hundreds of cores, and tens of GPUs). Having the bar-none fastest workstation solutions would be great for Apple's image. The xMac would provide a real boost among computer enthusiasts as well.

I think Apple should expand its tower based computer lineup from the rumored xMac all the way to "composable" Power Macs that could provide deskside supercomputing (not millions of cores, but hundreds of cores, and tens of GPUs). Having the bar-none fastest workstation solutions would be great for Apple's image. The xMac would provide a real boost among computer enthusiasts as well.

See my post above. Quad 8-core hyperthreaded Xeons for a total of 64 threads plus 1 TB RAM plus a bunch of GPUs both internal and on Thunderbolt isn't to be trifled with. Going on history, Apple could offer it pretty cheap compared with HP / Dell / IBM etc.

Still burns me that Apple never released a 64 bit clean EFI firmware update for the original 2006 MacPro1,1. They could have done it.

I hope Apple looks at Microsoft's positioning of Windows 8 and tacks the other way. iOS for consumer, Mac OS X for trucks... er, "professional" users. A clear and distinct difference between the use cases and needs when creating vs. consuming. 2013 could be a year where Apple takes advantage of the disarray of Windows 8 and goes aggressive at the desktop PC again while maintaining its lead in consumer tablets. I don't know if they have the gumption to do so.

Apple still plays a positioning game that is obviously marketing driven that frustrates it customers and ultimately is bad for their own PC business. The entry level Mac Pro was a laughably poor value as the only real differentiator between it and cheap Core i7 desktops available from everyone else was ECC RAM. Apple used premium materials, chipsets, and CPUs and charged an even higher premium. As you move up the Mac Pro line and the prices for the Intel CPUs ramp up, then Apple's Mac Pros become more competitive. Mac Pros with only a single CPU could not be upgraded to dual CPU and all that extra space is wasted (at least, w/o 3rd party additions).

It is clear that Apple is content with lower margins given the pricing and value of the iMac line. The Mac mini and entry level Mac Pro lines are laughably poor values in comparison. I'm still not sure why Apple is so keen on selling displays. They could just sell Thunderbolt Displays at the same margin as they sell it when stuffed inside an iMac. Just price up a Mac mini + Thunderbolt Display and compare it against a 27" iMac. It's like someone in marketing gets a bonus for each computer + display bundle sold so therefore we get these strange pricing distortions.

Apple, with its noted cash and its vertical integration of its OS, hardware design, application design, and ultimately its self fulfilling notion of innovation could do something very radical if they had the guts to do it. For example, Apple could end up doing some very, very cool things with Thunderbolt where they could put a GPU inside the Thunderbolt Display, so that each daisy-chained Thunderbolt Display gets an additional dedicated GPU. Then combine the Mac mini product line with the Mac Pro product line and create a set of stackables, similar to the SGI Itanium supercomputer bricks. Slots could come as its own stackable units, CPU+memory units as well as storage are its own stackable units, and all external ports and GPUs are in ThunderBolt Displays. An equivalent of a Mac mini would be a base cpu model which has RAM slots + storage module. This could be thought of as a blade concept but instead of a big chassis with blades, this is an external stackable. The #1 consumer of every CPU cycle available amongst traditional Mac users are video creation folks. Luckily, their workloads are often easily broken up for parallel execution and would fit a NUMA model quite well. There are also continued innovations to be found in large scale shared I/O, where tons of HD or 4K footage storage on magnetic disks with SSD acceleration need to be shared at the highest reasonable speed amongst a number of editing stations. Apple pioneered the use of low cost Fibre Channel and low cost external RAID using SATA disks with the Xserve RAID. There were plenty of providers using such technologies for much higher end enterprise workloads, but Apple was a low cost disrupter in this arena before the whole iOS side of things made them gobs upon unimaginable gobs of money. These days, however, I think Apple could both stake new ground in the living room as well as take on the needs of its traditional pro users. Will they have the guts to return to the Mac and make pros happy?

Only problem with the above board is relatively few card slots, and no on-board thunderbolt. So Apple might go with a slightly different board with more slots & provide Thunderbolt via an Intel add-on card.

Intel is not recommending adding Thunderbolt via an add-on card—it is "encouraging" mobo makers to integrate it onto the mobo itself, due to a variety of requirements for the spec in addition to PCIe and DisplayPort signals.

For their Pro level hardware and software offerings Apple, Inc. should publish a roadmap. On the consumer side they can stay secretive and all, but it is beyond ridiculous not to have a roadmap for Pro level offerings.

Apple, Inc. really needs to change their ways, or perhaps as has been suggested Apple really wants to exit the Pro market... eventually.

Only problem with the above board is relatively few card slots, and no on-board thunderbolt. So Apple might go with a slightly different board with more slots & provide Thunderbolt via an Intel add-on card.

Intel is not recommending adding Thunderbolt via an add-on card—it is "encouraging" mobo makers to integrate it onto the mobo itself, due to a variety of requirements for the spec in addition to PCIe and DisplayPort signals.

You are right of course, but Apple has to start somewhere when designing its own motherboards. It would be interesting to look at how deeply do they go when designing a motherboard - do they start with a blank slate or do they take a reference design and go from there? With the wide range of shapes and sizes of high-performance motherboards their team designs (iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, Mac Mini, aTV, iMac, etc), they must have one of the best teams in the world.

I thought Ivy Bridge-E wasn't due until Q3 this year? Has that been bumped up, or is a soft launch expected? At any rate, it's desperately overdue.

Kurenai wrote:

Honestly, I think that apple doesn't necessarily need a new tower anywhere

You're wrong, they need a new tower. They needed a new tower last year, at least to the extent they don't just want to abandon the entire market. The case is horribly outdated, as are all the internals.

Quote:

It needs a retina-class desktop display.

Utterly independent of the system. Due to defect probabilities yields drop dramatically as size scales up unless the process is very, very mature, and that's ignoring issues of supply. That is not something Apple magically change. If it works out then great, I'd love to see HiDPI large screens with Nanosys' QDEF as much as anyone, but it has nothing to do with the Mac Pro.

Quote:

The right move is a somewhat updated tower, paired with a 3820x2400 monitor. They could sell the monitor for $1500 alone, or perhaps $3000 for both. That would make for a compelling and frankly necessary offering.

Not surprised apple is waiting on new Intel silicon. It's actually a smart move. Existing Xeons are not a significant upgrade from what apple already sells,

SB-E was a significant update, an E5-2690 for example is about 33% faster then a similarly clocked (2.9 vs 2.93) X5670 on average, with significant spikes in some applications. And the "high end" 4 year old GPU Apple offers (5870) is obviously slaughtered by everything long since. A tower is more then just the CPU, although for some odd reason lots of people in these threads seem to forget that.

Quote:

I do wish they did one in early 2012, a minor bump, but I think they had issues with either a comperable board fitting in the chassis, or power supply requirements that would have required a redesign anyway of the chassis.

Utter bullshit, TDPs have not gone up. They were just lazy and didn't care, period. They could have updated the machine significantly even without any new GPU at all. Their moves and reaction show all the signs of a company that figured it'd just blow off a minority and it wouldn't matter, then was caught off guard by the fuss and had to scramble.

The 2006 Mac Pro was a truly amazing machine, one of the finest personal computers ever made. They were so inexpensive for the hardware on offer; the $2500 model would be more like $4K from everyone else. They were wildly expandable, with eight RAM slots, and four PCIe slots with malleable lane configurations, so you could just plug in pretty much anything, and allocate the PCIe lanes pretty much how you wanted. And the machine was really, really quiet, although the aluminum case would transmit drive sound like crazy if you put anything loud in it.

Everything since has been disappointing, much more expensive, and badly crippled in terms of RAM totals. In 2006, they were the slam-dunk decision, way better than anyone else. But at every refresh since, they've fallen farther and farther behind the workstation-class machines from Dell and HP, selling at fairly comparable prices.

I've been thinking for a long time that Apple doesn't really want to sell Mac Pros, and they're gradually making them so unappealing that they can quietly discontinue them, blaming low demand. They've found new markets they'd rather use their tech talent on. From a money perspective, it's hard to blame them, but I also understand when the pro users feel shafted, between the gradual obsolescence of the platform and the steady degradation of the pro-level software Apple used to do.

Personally I would love to see the new Mac Pro with 8 RAM slots for a max of 256 GB RAM, room for 6 hard drives - same easy install as current case, 4 independent Thunderbolt ports, 4 USB-3 ports, two FireWire-800 ports that can support FireWire 400 devices through an adapter, top of the line graphic card support with ability to support a minimum of 4 monitors, and 8-core (16 threads) through 32-core (64 threads) options.

Perhaps Apple will make it a modular system that can support up to the max of the above specs. So you could have everything from the longed after mid-size 8-core tower to a 32-core (64 thread) beast with 256 GB RAM?

I've no idea how true this story is, but there's a great opportunity to make something physically smaller than the Mac Pro, but still extendible perhaps with multiple Thunderbolt ports, that could occupy the cost, size and performance gap between the current Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, and go beyond the current Mac Pro in basic processing/RAM. It would be a shame if Apple were reluctant to do this for fear of cannibalising sales of the iMac, especially as they're having so much trouble making and supplying them.

Tim Cook (Apple CEO) has stated that Apple does not fear cannabalization.

I've been thinking for a long time that Apple doesn't really want to sell Mac Pros, and they're gradually making them so unappealing that they can quietly discontinue them, blaming low demand. They've found new markets they'd rather use their tech talent on. From a money perspective, it's hard to blame them, but I also understand when the pro users feel shafted, between the gradual obsolescence of the platform and the steady degradation of the pro-level software Apple used to do.

I think this currently accepted "groupthink" about the Mac Pro is likely wildly wrong.

Apple has huge resources. It has over $100 billion sitting in the bank. It can easily expend the design resources to keep the Mac Pro up to date, and in fact could very well leapfrog well ahead of the competition. It certainly has the capacity to innovate on several completely different fronts.

The Mac Pro is a "halo product" that has beneficial effects for Apple well beyond its direct profits. Scientists, engineers, software developers and creative professionals who use them are exposed to the benefits of MacOS, and are likely to evangelize for Apple.

I think Apple should expand its tower based computer lineup from the rumored xMac all the way to "composable" Power Macs that could provide deskside supercomputing (not millions of cores, but hundreds of cores, and tens of GPUs). Having the bar-none fastest workstation solutions would be great for Apple's image. The xMac would provide a real boost among computer enthusiasts as well.

I agree with your statements, stated very well. However without a published roadmap for Pros to depend on Apple, Inc. shoots itself in the foot by causing fear that they may be abandoning the Pro market. So people either leave for other platforms or stay with the current hardware they have for a long time. It is time for Apple to publish hardware and software roadmaps for all of their Pro level offerings.

Personally I would love to see the new Mac Pro with 8 RAM slots for a max of 256 GB RAM

As amazing as that would be, considering Apple's rather, uh... limited choices for configuration, compounded with their, uh... rather unique price point on pre-installed RAM, I would imagine that that would be disastrous for the independent power user looking to buy a Pro. With a 256GB ceiling, I can't imagine them doing anything other than the typical 3 tiered RAM settings, at 64, 128, and 256, which would be nothing short of catastrophic to a wallet considering Apple's (in)famous RAM prices.

One aside, though, is how often they tend to lowball the listed ceiling of maximum RAM at time of checkout. Some of the older iMacs, the 2008 24" for example, were listed as maxing out at 4GB, whereas it was discovered that they could take 6GB.

Personally I would love to see the new Mac Pro with 8 RAM slots for a max of 256 GB RAM

As amazing as that would be, considering Apple's rather, uh... limited choices for configuration, compounded with their, uh... rather unique price point on pre-installed RAM, I would imagine that that would be disastrous for the independent power user looking to buy a Pro. With a 256GB ceiling, I can't imagine them doing anything other than the typical 3 tiered RAM settings, at 64, 128, and 256, which would be nothing short of catastrophic to a wallet considering Apple's (in)famous RAM prices.

One aside, though, is how often they tend to lowball the listed ceiling of maximum RAM at time of checkout. Some of the older iMacs, the 2008 24" for example, were listed as maxing out at 4GB, whereas it was discovered that they could take 6GB.

I hope Apple, Inc. will offer zero-RAM configuration options. If not then buy with the minimum RAM from Apple and expand it by buying from more reasonably priced sources.

The 2006 Mac Pro was a truly amazing machine, one of the finest personal computers ever made. They were so inexpensive for the hardware on offer; the $2500 model would be more like $4K from everyone else. They were wildly expandable, with eight RAM slots, and four PCIe slots with malleable lane configurations, so you could just plug in pretty much anything, and allocate the PCIe lanes pretty much how you wanted. And the machine was really, really quiet, although the aluminum case would transmit drive sound like crazy if you put anything loud in it.

Everything since has been disappointing, much more expensive, and badly crippled in terms of RAM totals. In 2006, they were the slam-dunk decision, way better than anyone else. But at every refresh since, they've fallen farther and farther behind the workstation-class machines from Dell and HP, selling at fairly comparable prices.

I'd agree with everything you said, with the exception that I would say the early 2008 mac pro was the true sweet spot. It had all the advantages you listed, but also ran 64-bit EFI out of the box, and has better/easier 64-bit OS support these days as a result.I'm still running mine . . . upgraded with a PCI-E SSD raid, some other SSDs, a radeon 5870, and 2x 3.2 Ghz cpu's. I love it, but I'd be ready to buy a new one as long as it's reasonably priced and uses the current intel chipsets and cpu's.

The 2006 Mac Pro was a truly amazing machine, one of the finest personal computers ever made. They were so inexpensive for the hardware on offer; the $2500 model would be more like $4K from everyone else. They were wildly expandable, with eight RAM slots, and four PCIe slots with malleable lane configurations, so you could just plug in pretty much anything, and allocate the PCIe lanes pretty much how you wanted. And the machine was really, really quiet, although the aluminum case would transmit drive sound like crazy if you put anything loud in it.

Everything since has been disappointing, much more expensive, and badly crippled in terms of RAM totals. In 2006, they were the slam-dunk decision, way better than anyone else. But at every refresh since, they've fallen farther and farther behind the workstation-class machines from Dell and HP, selling at fairly comparable prices.

I'd agree with everything you said, with the exception that I would say the early 2008 mac pro was the true sweet spot. It had all the advantages you listed, but also ran 64-bit EFI out of the box, and has better/easier 64-bit OS support these days as a result.I'm still running mine . . . upgraded with a PCI-E SSD raid, some other SSDs, a radeon 5870, and 2x 3.2 Ghz cpu's. I love it, but I'd be ready to buy a new one as long as it's reasonably priced and uses the current intel chipsets and cpu's.

I think 2009 was actually the sweetest spot, 2008 was the cutoff spot. As you say, 2008 is just on the right side of the 64-bit cut off, and so they've got dramatically more staying power then the 2006/2007. Unfortunately, the 2008 is just on the wrong side of the change way from FB-DIMMs, and as a result memory is depressingly expensive, easily 3x the price of standard DD3 that everything since has used. The 2008 was a champ, but boy does it sting adding even an extra 8GB to it when for less money you could add 24GB to a 2009/2010.

One aside, though, is how often they tend to lowball the listed ceiling of maximum RAM at time of checkout. Some of the older iMacs, the 2008 24" for example, were listed as maxing out at 4GB, whereas it was discovered that they could take 6GB.

"Lowball" is kind of a negative term, but I don't think Apple is being devious here. In most cases Apple lists the max ram capacity based on the actual modules available to them when they test before the launch of the product. When higher-capacity modules become available after launch and they happen to work just fine in that Mac, they don't go back and revise the specs.

If Apple wanted to be completely greedy, they would raise the specs and also offer an appropriately increased high-margin (i.e., typically more expensive than anyone else) RAM upgrade for it. But they choose not to do that.

In my Macs, if trusted sources report that new higher-capacity RAM works beyond Apple's original spec, I put it in, and it works fine.